Ladakhi folk music may have its roots in West Central Asia but was later influenced by South Asian traditions. Today it is still embellishing old music with new ideas.
Ladakh's Matho monastery stands on a rocky outcrop above the place where the Matho River meets the Indus. It's winter, and the monastery is packed. People squeeze together in the courtyard and on the flat rooftops, leaning over parapets to catch a glimpse. Suddenly a great roar goes up from the crowd, Ki ki so so lha ge lo, "may the Gods be victorious". Two figures emerge from the main temple, brandishing swords, leopard skins around their waists, running, running. And as they run, drums beat out an insistent rhythm like the pounding of sea surf, rising and falling. Sometimes the figures pause for a moment, screaming a prophecy for the coming year, or slashing arms and tongues with their naked blades. Flecks of blood cover the white scarves, katak, which people have offered them. These are the Gods of Matho, the Rongtsan or "spirits of the gorge". They were brought here, so the story goes, from Eastern Tibet by the founder of Matho monastery, sworn to protect Matho and Buddhism. They belong to a pre-Buddhist age of Ladakhi and Tibetan history when the Gods ruled all; Gods of the gorge, the pass, the village, the hearth.
Dardic Roots
The musicians who drum for the Gods are not monks, but village musicians. And the rhythms are ancient. Mark Trewin, a musicologist from the City University, London, has been studying Ladakhi music since 1985. "The idea that we still find in Ladakh, of playing music to invoke deities and spirits, I think this has much older roots, dating back to an age before the arrival of Buddhism. It was probably regularly used at village level for actually inducing trance, inviting deities to the village."Trewin believes that the rhythms used in the Matho ceremony to accompany the Gods are similar to rhythms used by the Brogpa, the Dards, probably the original inhabitants of Ladakh, before the arrival of the Tibetans. To beat out this rhythm, Dards still use one of the oldest of drum forms, the barrel drum, a hollowed piece of wood with skin stretched over the ends. The drum is also still used for the New Year ceremony, Losar, in Leh, Ladakh's capital. It's also to be found among the Kafirs of northern Pakistan, Nurestan and Afghanistan, believed to be related to the Dards, of pre-Islamic, Iranian heritage.